Just read through these threads again - is it possible that my erratic idling (and stalling in traffic sometimes) is caused solely by letting the fuel run low? I sometimes switch the overhead console display to DTE when the fuel light comes on and run it till it says I have about 10 - 20 miles to go before filling it up - certainly laast weekend it cut out 2 or three times when I had very little fuel in, and the erratic running, on at least one occasion, was when I was below 1/4 full on fuel and parked on a steepish ramp.

 

One cause of poor idle is exhaust gas recirculating back into your intake.A faulty EGR is the most widely known culprit but there is another source that can potentially choke your engine.

 

Hello tunersMy tire sensor broke so I had to change with new one cost 118with new tire 170 after all the work, service require warning sign is still show up Is there way to fix this problem by myself? i contect with dealer, will cost me 100

 

(Short update and follow up on message #24) The fuel pump assembly (including filter, etc) has now been replaced. We made a few trips since then. So far so good. However it is to early to declare the problem solved. Will need a few thousand troublefree km's for that. Hope to post this milestone in a month or so.

 

Despite all checks and repairs we got stranded again this weekend, 300 km after the last repair..

These were the symptoms:
- While cruising at about 100 km/h engine cuts out about 15 mins after starting trip.
- Engine would not start initially
- Wait for about 2 minutes
- Engine only starts with great difficulty after cranking about10/15 sec. I tried revving the engine (while at standstill) at 3000 RPM for a while to charge battery, but engine cuts of after about 10 sec.
- wait a few minutes.
- Above happened a few times in a row.
- Meanwhile I have checked that lift pump delivers fuel by pushing the needle at the front of the engine with contact 1 tick before starting (abundant fuel coming out). I also looked for black smoke at the moments the engine was running, but couldn't see any.
- Finally started engine and revved up to 2000 rpm, left engine running at this rpm for 5 mins (car still parked), then tried to drive away carefully. before I could reach any speed , the car stalled again.
- Started engine (still after prolonged cranking) end left it running for 5 min at 2000 rpm. Then left it idling at 700 rpm for another 10 mins. Then started driving (not exceeding 2000 rpm) and got home.

Car is now parked in back yard.

I started it a moment ago without a problem. Fault code read out is still p1130. The only thing I noticed is that when I switch on the contact, but do not start the engine and wait until the lift pump stops there is still a soft buzzing sound coming from the High Pressure pump (probably the high pressure solenoid). This sound was present before the solenoid was replaced, and definitely was not there after the replacement (until now). At the time I concluded that this buzzing sound was a symptom of a problem, but now I am not sure.

Next steps?
I don't know where to go from here. One possible cause that is given by Chrysler is "air in fuel lines".
- Does anybody know If there are weak spots that can be checked?
- Does anybody know how the system gets rid of air anyway? Is this injected in the fuel tank or is there a valve somewhere?

 

check the wiring on the bracket above the alternator as it can be common to rub through here. try get a new mprop valve under parts warranty if possible, it sounds faulty, and for chrysler to send out faulty parts is not unlikely. check egr pipe at back right corner of engine, as these crack.

 

Ok. Thanks Matt. I will do the checks.

 

I can imagine you guys are getting tired of this topic, but I think I finally made some progress.
This is my report, I hope it may be useful to others, although unfortunately at I end I still have some questions.

Symptoms : car stalls at random moments, code p1130 shows, messages are leakage detected or pressure to high. Problem is intermittent. Seems to go away for a while when fuel filter is drained. Seems to occur when tank is near empty.

Work done so far: checked leak-back of injectors, replaced M-prop valve, replaced lift pump, replaced fuel filter (twice), checked for wire faults, check for damage of EGR pipe

This is what I did:

At the front of the car, connected a plastic tube to fuel line (see picture) that runs to the HP pump. Had to remove the triangle shape frame that sits on the alternator for that. Closed off the line to the HP pump. Operated the lift pump without cranking. First diesel blows into the tube, but soon this changes into a mixture of (mainly) air and diesel. It is not possible to pump large quantities of diesel. Definitely not good!

Next went back to the lift pump. This is connected with 2 fuel lines that go to the engine and 2 lines that go to the tank. Disconnected the suction line to the fuel tank (this has a slightly larger diameter than the retour line). Connected the pump with a second plastic tube that leads to a jerry can of diesel. I can now use my car to pump diesel from 1 jerrycan to another (see picture).

Then applied the lift pump again. The result was that at the front fuel without air bubbles was pumped out. Conclusion: it seems there is something funny with the fuel tank.

Next step I tried to blow air through the suction pipe, but this appeared to be blocked. Then used a bicycle pump to apply more pressure and the line suddenly gave way with a plopping sound. Hope I did not damage anything doing that. After that I could blow air into the line end could hear the end of the line was below the fuel level. [Edit 2010 02 15 by Jacob: Not a good idea to blow air in the suction pipe of the tank. This way you will damage a leak back valve inside the fuel pickup unit.]

Then went on and removed the tank from the car. After I had opened it I could see a that the suction unit has a filter attached to it and this filter was totally covered with a grease like dirt . The picture was taken after I had taken the dirt of. Cleaned everything as good as I could and put everything together again.

Repeated the experiment with the lift pump again, expecting that there would be no air at all. This was not exactly the case. If one continues to use the lift pump, it will still blow some air. However the amount of diesel that was pumped was considerably more than before, I could pump 5 liters in short while. So at the end assumed that this was normal and put the car together.

The dirt that was found in the tank had a green-grey color and I assume that is due to algae growth that one reads about on the internet. I am pretty sure that this is what has been causing the problems. To prevent new contamination a product against micro organisms was added to the fuel. Also it has been very cold lately, so I don't think these are good growing conditions anyway.

========
So far my report. I hope it will be useful to some of you.

After all this I have been making a number of trips and everything seemed ok ... until yesterday. In the morning the car started fine. But when I started the car for the trip back It would only run 1 second and then die. This happened a few times. After I got it running it has also stalled 3 times in the fist 7 kms. After that I have added 30liters of fuel (the tank was just above r reserve) and drove back home 100km's without a problem.

So I am wondering what is happening now . Is this a new problem or just the old one not properly cured. It seems that the car runs fine as long as the tank has more than 1/4 fuel in it. What I can think of is a fuel filter that is plugged (within 600 km after it went in). Maybe when this filter plugs, fuel is sucked though the retour pipe to the tank . If this has a mounting point at 1/4 level of the tank, this would explain a lot? To verify this I could do the experiment with the lift pump again to check if the amount of air that is pumped is somehow related to the level in the fuel tank.

I will be very interested if anything above rings a bell to anybody.
Regards
Jacob

 

Did some more work on the car and reached some conclusions. Thought it might be a good thing to share it here.

One of the many causes of P1130 fault codes is air in the supply of diesel. If one suspects this the next steps might help:

Warning before: Don't try doing something similar with fuel systems that contain petrol because of the risk of fire and explosion.

Diagnosis for air in diesel supply:
- Connect a plastic tube to the fuel line at the front (see previous post);
- Operate the lift pump a few times (do not start). Check if there are many air bubbles visible in the plastic tube;
- Another check you can do is to connect the tube an external pump. In my case I did not have a pump and a used an industrial vacuum cleaner combined with a jerrycan (see picture);
- These checks should tell you if there is something wrong with the fuel supply to the HP pump;
- If this is the case, there may be a number of causes. In my case it was the fuel tank.

You may check the fuel tank in the following way:
- remove most of the fuel from the tank but leave some fuel in. I found using the tube at the front combined with an improvised pump a handy way to do this;
- disconnect the fuel lines from the lift pump;
- remove the bolt on the front of the tank and loosen up two bolts of the tank in the middle of the car;
- disconnect the electrical connection to the tank (slide open the red strip on the connector first);
- remove the two bolts that hold the tank in the middle of the car and lower/tilt the tank to support (no need to disconnect the fuel filler);
- connect a plastic tube directly on the tank;
- connect the tube to a pump and check if air appears in the tube.

In my case air started to appear only when the suction was increased above a certain level. This explains why operating the lift pump brings air in the system, while at normal driving conditions there was continuous fuel supply.

If the air is coming from the tank, you can remove the fuel unit:
- With the tank in tilted position, remove the fuel unit (no need to remove the tank);
- Inspect the fuel inlet sock If it is plugged, fuel can only pass at a slow rate. When more fuel is needed per time unit, the unit will suck air instead;
- Normally there is no need to take apart the fuel unit, but in my case there apparently was, as this is the second time I have removed the fuel unit;
- Inside the fuel unit there is a device with an iron ball in it. Exactly what it does I don't understand, but it probably has to do with fuel supply when taking a corner. It also operates as a one way valve.
- In my case it had sprung open (see picture), probably because I had applied air pressure when blowing the fuel line a few weeks before. As a result, the fuel inlet point is higher then before, which gave trouble when the tank was near empty. Also fuel is allowed to flow back in the tank when the engine is off.

Although I have been stranded too many times to assume anything, I hope my car is now definitively cured from the P1130 issue. We'll see.

Kind regards
Jacob

 

A few days after my last post my car started to develop problems again. Although this time they were reproducible:
- when starting the engine from cold, it would run 1 sec and then stop. Only when applying the throttle the engine would really start and keep running;
- when applying heavy throttle at low rpm the engine cuts out.

I have brought the car to a company that specializes in diesel engines only. They have specific test equipment to test injectors and they can also rebuild them. They observed out of range parameters when scanning the car and later also observed contamination of the fuel system by micro organisms.

They have:
- replaced fuel filter (which showed contamination of slime)

- replaced MPROP valve ( again, to be certain)
- tested injectors on a test bench and found their parameters out of range
- replaced 4 injectors with rebuilt ones
- sent me home with a bottle of grotamar 71

They also have recommended to replace the fuel filter again soon.

Since then we have driven about 1000 km without any incident, so it seems that for the time being the car is ok.